Quagmire
by PrairieDawn
Summary: Follows Reprieve and Ember. Alex and the Doctor travel to the Carboniferous, where they encounter zoologist/adventurer Nigel Marven. No more violent than a Doctor Who TV ep.
1. Chapter 1

Author's Notes: Events occur in the Tenth Doctor's continuity, between Voyage of the Damned and Partners in Crime. Alex appears as an original companion in the stories Reprieve and Ember. Zoologist/adventurer Nigel Marven managed a wildlife preserve for rescued extinct animals on Prehistoric Park before being eaten by a giganotosaurus on Primeval. No relation to actual adventurer/zoologist Nigel Marven. (yeah, right) This story occurs some time before the Prehistoric Park Episode, The Bug House.

Warnings: (A?)OFC, gratuitous mud, mild profanity, gratuitous tea, telepathy stuff, preteen angst (now there's a redundant phrase).

Thanks to Spring at Teaspoon for all the beta reading.

* * *

Alex felt herself being spun around and stretched, then dropped, suddenly and sickeningly, then it all stopped and she found herself flat on her bottom on the mesh floor of the Tardis. After a brief, fortunately victorious battle with her own stomach, she grabbed the Tardis console and hauled herself to her feet. The Doctor closed the distance between them in two long strides, concern on his face.

"I'm fine, I'm fine," she insisted, waving him off. "Does it always feel like that?"

"Like what?

"Like being drunk."

"What do you know about being drunk? Oh, right, most humans don't notice. You get used to it." He peered into a laptop screen jury rigged to the control panel. "I'm sorry, it looks like we're still on Earth. 280 million years in your past, though. Want to try again for a weird planet?'

"No!" she said a little too quickly, then, "No. That's the Carboniferous, right? Dragonflies this big?" She stretched her arms out as far as they would go.

"The same." He looked at her expectantly, a goofy grin plastered across his face.

"Cool," she allowed, not quite matching his level of enthusiasm.

"All right then." Was she imagining it, or did he look disappointed? "Some rules. No wandering off, no touching anything unless I say you can, and if I say run, you run. The Tardis has its own agenda, and when it sends me somewhere I haven't intended to go, there's usually a reason."

She cocked her head at him. "A reason that involves running?"

The Doctor shrugged and threw open the door. Dense tropical forest lay before them, full of oddly shaped trees, with an understory of ferns. Trills and whistles filled the warm, humid air, along with the rich smell of compost. "Well, come on then," he said, stepping outside.

She stepped out into the damp vegetation. Water pooled around her feet and soaked into her sneakers. A many legged thing as thick as her finger crawled over one damp foot and disappeared back into the undergrowth. They had landed in a small, oddly circular clearing dominated by miniature ferns and mossy plants she couldn't identify. The forest surrounded them on all sides.

Alex took a couple of steps away from the Tardis. Two slick, red, salamanders basked on the trunk of one of the trees, bright as flowers against the dark, diamond scored bark. "Real flowers haven't evolved yet," she said, half to herself.

"Right you are," the Doctor confirmed. "What did you find,there?" He stepped up behind her to peer over her shoulder. "Did you know there are centipedes as big as...as big as cows out here somewhere?"

"I hope we don't smell like food," Alex replied.

The Doctor circled the little clearing again. "Something bothers me about this place, but I can't quite put my finger on it."

Alex scratched her head. "The clearing's a perfect circle. Is that weird?"

"Hmm, you have a point." He pulled out his screwdriver and waved it vaguely at the air, then tucked it back into his pocket with a puzzled expression. "We're not alone," the Doctor said.

"Yeah," Alex said, crouching down to look at a dragonfly the size of her head, bright and perfect as jewelry. "Bugs all over the place."

He shook his head, pointing to the sodden ground. A wiggly, geometric pattern was impressed into the mud, unmistakeable. Tire tracks. He put a finger to his lips, then made a stay back gesture. Alex leaned back against the Tardis door. The Doctor took half a dozen steps forward, following the tracks, then gestured to Alex to follow. "The tread looks like human technology, twentieth or twenty first century. Goodyear, if I'm not mistaken."

Alex followed in his footsteps. The tracks led to a pond, where the jeep that had produced them had foundered. Two people in khaki safari outfits, a tall, gangly man and a shorter, rounder woman, both liberally doused with mud, eyed the jeep ruefully, their backs to the Doctor and Alex.

"Bloody hell!" the woman said, ineffectually kicking the passenger side door of the jeep. "We'll never get it out. Not without a winch. You didn't bring a winch with you, did you?"

The tall man shook his head. "I didn't think I'd need a winch to take atmospheric samples." He sighed. "Well, might as well have a spot of tea and think about it. Something will come to me."

To Alex's surprise, the Doctor stepped right up to the jeep, smiling broadly. "Something always does." He slapped the man on the back with an odd cameraderie. "Nigel! I should have guessed it would be you. What on Earth brings you to the Carboniferous? No, seriously, what on Earth has the capacity to transport you to the Carboniferous?"

The man turned around, nonplussed, to stare at the Doctor, giving Alex her first glimpse of "Nigel's" face. Her hands flew up of their own accord to cover her spreading grin. Nigel Marven! A little wordless squeak of glee escaped her lips. She bounced on her toes.

Nigel extended a hand to the Doctor, who shook it, then tucked his own hands back into his coat pockets. "I'm afraid you have the advantage of me," Nigel said. Nigel Marven! Alex stifled a squeaky giggle. Fantastic!

"I'm the Doctor, Nigel." He managed to look both sad and terribly impressed with himself at the same time.

Nigel shook his head. "You're not the Doctor. He's taller, and," Nigel mimed fluff on the top of his head, "Curly."

"I regenerated. Several times, actually. It's a Time Lord thing. How about that cup of tea? My place. I may even have a winch somewhere in there."

Alex recovered her wits enough to say, "Chased by Dinosaurs. That was supposed to be CGI."

Nigel appeared to notice Alex for the first time. "A fan, I see. We," here he indicated himself and the Doctor, "filmed those on a lark, then cut everything together and pixilated the wildlife a bit to make it look less authentic." He squelched toward her. She wobbled, torn between delight and panic as the ground seemed to tilt toward him. She pretended her mental shields with every ounce of conviction she could muster and prayed he wasn't a hugger.

The Doctor came to the rescue, stepping between them on the pretext of making introductions. "Oh, and this is Alex, my..." he paused a moment, at an apparent loss to describe their relationship.

"Project." Alex suggested, then dissolved into more giggles.

The Doctor cast her a sharp look. "You have got to be kidding. Him? He's not even that good looking."

Alex let the two of them pass her, followed by the woman with the backpack. "Soggy sort of era, the Carboniferous," the Doctor remarked, "Didn't catch your name?"

"Lynn."

"Right. Lynn. Coming, Alex?"

She squished back toward the Tardis, but hadn't quite caught up with them when an exasperated cry of, "Blast!" stopped her.

Lynn added, "I bloody hate bloody swamps."

She rounded the clump of vegetation that had been obscuring her view of the Tardis. For a horrible moment she thought it had vanished, but then she saw the angular blue shape behind the three others. Lying on its side. She wondered if the whole ship would be sideways now, or whether the same Escher-like topography that allowed it to fit inside the box would also assure that it was right side up, regardless of the box's orientation. Why were the three of them standing there looking dejected, in that case?

She caught up with them, finally, and the cause of their consternation became clear. The Tardis was not lying on its side. It was lying on its face, in about a foot of muddy water. A number of words she wasn't supposed to use came to mind. She settled on, "Ouch."

The Doctor walked all the way around it, even taking out his sonic screwdriver thingy and waving it about again. Alex caught his puzzled, almost distressed expression before he pasted cheer over it and turned back to Nigel and Lynn. "Right, your place then."

They trudged back to the partially submerged jeep for the tea things. Lynn casually tossed an amphibian the size of a dog off of a large duffel bag in the back seat and hauled it over her shoulder. Nigel spread a tarp on a bit of relatively high ground. Lynn put together a camp stove just to the side of the tarp, while the Doctor arranged camp stools. Alex stood at the edge of the tarp feeling useless and clumsy. After everyone had pulled up a chair, she sat down, crosslegged, on the tarp, not quite trusting the camp stools.

"There are four chairs," Nigel offered.

"I'm fine here." She pulled her own bag onto her lap to fish for some snacks, but Nigel and Lynn were well supplied with scones and jam, which looked appealing, and bread and marmite, which looked awful and smelled worse. The Doctor intercepted the tea and scones Nigel tried to pass to her, handing them off to her himself. "I'm not a complete cripple," she protested. Except she was kind of grateful.

"We found our time portal in a pocket universe linked to a spot in South Africa," Nigel explained. "UNIT supplied our portable field generators. We're building a sort of nature preserve. Extinct wildlife. You should see our pair of juvenile tyrannosaurs."

"And the animals stay in the pocket universe?"

Nigel attempted to appear shocked. "Of course, I'm not that stupid."

The Doctor shrugged. "Well, I won't say I like the idea, precisely, but humans mucking about in time is inevitable at this point. There ought to be an agency to regulate that sort of thing."

"They'd try to regulate you, too."

"Let them try," the Doctor remarked, grinning.

Nigel gestured to Alex, still speaking to the Doctor. "So, did you run out of post pubescent companions?"

"I'm her guardian at present." The Doctor turned to Alex. "So, how would you suggest we solve our twin problems, the jeep and the Tardis?"

Alex had the sudden, sinking feeling that she had landed in a practical math lesson. "That depends." She turned around to study the Tardis. "The Tardis is small on the outside, but big on the inside. How big is it in there, really? Big as the Earth?"

"No."

"Big as Chicago?"

The Doctor had to pause. "I don't think so, anymore. Used to be close. Do you have a point?"

Alex continued, "Where does it keep its mass? If its apparent mass is like a big wooden crate, we could use ropes and levers to move it. But the three of you aren't going to be able to move something with the mass of a city."

"Very good."

"So, which is it?" Alex prompted.

The Doctor's eyes twinkled. "I think you have enough information to figure that out."

She looked back over her shoulder at the prone timeship. "If it had the mass of a city, and the footprint of a box, it would have sunk further into the swamp. All the way to the bedrock, at least. Right?" Encouraged by the Doctor's nod, she continued, "So it can't be impossibly heavy. We could attach some ropes to it and pull it onto its side. What is its mass? I mean, practically."

"Two hundred forty kilos, roughly. What about the jeep?"

"We get inside the Tardis and find the winch. Although," she paused. "We could just tie a rope to the back bumper and take off. Would the jeep go with us, just flapping along behind?"

"Not my jeep, you don't," interrupted Lynn.

They were all interrupted, then, by a deep, irregular rumbling that shook the crumbs off their plates. "That sounded unnervingly geological," Lynn said. She started packing up the tea things, briskly, into a green Gore-Tex bag. Alex gathered the ones near her and set them in a pile next to the bag.

"No, it didn't," both Nigel and the Doctor said. The Doctor continued, "That sounded technological. Right, to work! Let's get the old girl flipped over. We are leaving."

"We just got here!" Alex protested.

"You know, ordinarily I would agree with you, but you are in no condition to investigate unknown technology. You can barely manage tea! It wouldn't be safe."

Alex protested, "If the world ends in the Carboniferous, I'll never evolve, and that wouldn't be safe either. You're supposed to be here. Do your job. I'll be okay."

"We'll flip the Tardis over, and you will wait inside."

"Fine." Alex sat on the tarp and watched Nigel, Lynn, and the Doctor rig ropes reinforced with duct tape around the Tardis until she got bored, then watched the dragonflies divebomb some less familiar flying creatures until ditto, then the ground underneath her rumbled again, louder. This time she noticed the slightly metallic scree to the sound that must have alerted Nigel and the Doctor. The adults redoubled their efforts to right the Tardis. Swearing was involved, mostly on the part of Lynn, who combined words Alex already knew into combinations she had never heard before.

Suddenly, she was aware of another sound. It was a tiny, little sound, something like a trickle, like a leaking toilet. It grew a little louder, became a rivulet, water running over obstacles. The others had not noticed, they were so intent on their work. The Tardis had not yet budged, but there was a line of mud about two inches up on its side, like a high water mark. Where had the water gone? The sound grew louder. "Can you hear the water?" she said. Her voice came out small and uncertain.

She tried again. "Can you hear the water?" There was no answer. She stood up, ran over to where the Doctor and Nigel were discussing knots, and tumbled to the sodden ground when Nigel moved suddenly. "Doctor! Listen to the water!" she shouted.

The Doctor stopped. The sound grew in the seconds that he stood, listening. It was roaring now. The ground canted underneath them--really actually tilted, sending Nigel and Lynn rolling into the side of the Tardis. The Doctor stayed upright a bare moment longer. He snatched Alex up, tight against his body with one arm, then they, too, slid feet first toward the pit opening beneath them. She could feel his mind, an unbearable brilliance, for a split second before he damped himself down. Silent running, she thought, and wondered if the term was her own idea. Ahead, the Tardis tipped into the hole, followed by Nigel and Lynn.

"Take a breath and hold it!" he shouted over the roaring water, then they were over the side. They hung in midair for a sickening instant before slamming into turbulent, bathtub warm water. It was pitch black, but picked out in the darkness were the golden nimbus of the Tardis, two patches of swirling, refracted light that were Nigel and Lynn, both shot with fear-static. She could hear them shouting. Funny she hadn't noticed that before.

"I can swim, get them!" she yelled, squirming clear of the Doctor's too tight grip. "They can't find the Tardis on their own!" Once he released her, she swam a fast crawl over to the Tardis, which, miracle of miracles, floated. The door would not open. She clung to the wooden slats, pulled along with the ship in the current.

The Doctor led first, Lynn, then Nigel to the Tardis, then climbed on top. She wished she could see what he was doing, but he was just a big bright blob, she couldn't pick out limbs or anything. Nigel shouted, "The little girl, where's the little girl?"

"I'm over here! Stay over there." She racked her brain for a good excuse. "If we move, we'll tip it!" That even had the advantage of being true.

"I've got the door open. Alex, you first." He hauled her up by the arm. This time he remembered to go silent(ish) first. She tumbled into the Tardis, and was right side up. She couldn't even feel the motion of the ship bobbing in the water. The sudden change distracted her enough that she forgot to get out of the way of Nigel as he rolled into the Tardis and right into her. The floor dropped out from under her and she was swallowed up in deafening color and brilliant noise. She couldn't breathe or think or find her legs to escape.

Words cut through the chaos. "All right, you over here." Hands under her shoulders, dragging her over to one wall. She rolled over, threw up, and started to cry in earnest. "Nigel, you all right?" the Doctor said, then turned his attention to Alex.

She turned her face away from him, ashamed. "Leave me alone," she whispered.

The Doctor turned to Nigel and Lynn, but still kept looking over at her. He had that worried look she hated to see on her mother's face. Nigel was sitting on the floor with a handkerchief to his face. "She kicked me in the nose, I think," Nigel said, in that stuffed up voice people use when they're trying to stifle a nosebleed.

"I hurt you," she said, disgusted with herself. Great, now that would be how he'd remember her. The stupid, clumsy girl who kicked him in the head and then bawled like a stupid baby.

"Yeah, you kicked me in the nose. I've had worse," Nigel insisted. "I just want to know why you're so upset."

Alex tried to stand on wobbly legs. "I'm a monster." She headed for the rear of the control room, using the wall for support. "There's always a monster. I'm it." She stumbled to her room and slammed the door.


	2. Chapter 2

More warnings: hermaphroditic octopus people, gratuitous Beatles reference, three dead bodies (nonhominid)

Thanks to Spring at Teaspoon for wonderful beta reading

* * *

Alex sat crosslegged on her bed, her face mashed into a pillow she held on her lap. She'd changed into a dry sweatsuit from her backpack. Her wet clothes lay wadded where she'd dropped them. The Doctor knocked on her door. "Go away," she said into the pillow.

"I'm coming in." The Doctor opened the door, swung her desk chair around backwards, and straddled it. Silent running, she noticed, even though she'd have preferred not to.

"Is Nigel OK?" she muffled.

"He's fine, you didn't kick him that hard. How are you? Still dizzy?"

"No," she lied. "Did you tell him?"

"Did I tell him what?"

"About the, you know. About me."

He winced. "I'm sorry, I thought that if they understood the situation, we could avoid any more accidents."

She hugged her pillow, wishing Ember was around, but the cat had gone off on her own errands. "I want to be like everybody else. I want to go home," she said. "Just make it stop."

He had that look again, her dad's look, the one midway between exasperated and haggard. "I can't."

"Bet you're lying." Her face was hot and stinging from tears.

"All right, I could, but I won't." He spread his hands out, a placating gesture. "You come by your talent honestly, just an accident of genes and environment. Changing who you are just because you don't like it would be wrong."

She sniffled. "Are we still in the Carboniferous?" She wiped her eyes and nose on the pillowcase. Yeah, she thought, I'm a disgusting kid, live with it.

The Doctor nodded. "Bobbing along in an underground river, headed for parts unknown. Isn't it fun?" He grinned.

It would be if she could be somebody else while it was happening.

"We've stopped," he said, abruptly. "Can you tell?"

"No," she said, sarcasm creeping into her voice.

"Well, we have stopped. Come on, mysteries to be solved!" He bounced up from the chair and out the door, leaving it open behind him.

A small part of her wondered why he wasn't leaving her in the Tardis, where it was safe, like he said he was going to. Unless he didn't think it was safe to leave her alone. What did he think she was going to do, break something in a fit of pique? She stood up, glad that he didn't see her have to clutch at the corner of the desk until she could stand without swaying. She left her soaked shoes and socks on the floor.

The Doctor peered into his laptop screen, flipped some switches, and hit a button. The Tardis wheezed, but only for a second. "There now, dry land. Everyone out."

They headed out of the Tardis, Alex cowed, fuming, and barefoot beside the Doctor, the other two following. Nigel and Lynn turned on their flashlights. It smelled of dead fish and rotting vegetation. The ground was smooth and slightly concave, as though they were walking along the interior of a huge pipe. Alex trailed an arm along the wall for balance, so preoccupied with her indignation that she didn't see the body until it was right in front of her. The first thing to cross her mind was a bitter amazement that she hadn't tripped over it first. It had four fat tentacles instead of legs, and four more slender ones instead of arms. All were encased in a multipocketed dark jumpsuit made of stiff fabric. It had no face that she could see, but that might have been normal for it. There was a lidded pail lying on the floor next to the body, with writing scratched on it in a script that looked simultaneously alien and English. Part of the writing was a name she couldn't begin to figure out how to pronounce, but the other part said, "This is not your food." Tools lay haphazardly about the body, where they had been dropped or flung.

"Kind of working class, for Cthulhu," Lynn remarked from behind her.

Alex picked up the bucket. "I've never seen a real dead person before," she said.

"Using person a bit loosely, aren't you?" Lynn said. "Count the legs."

Alex passed the bucket to her. "He wore clothes, he used tools, he could write. That ought to be enough."

The Doctor snatched the bucket up to examine, "And he...or she, or it, mind you, kept getting its lunch stolen by its coworkers." He didn't say it like it was funny, either, which was just as well, because it wasn't funny at all. "Are there any more of them about?"

Nigel and Lynn fanned out to search. Alex squatted by the body. "Can't do anything for him now," the Doctor said, gently. She ran several snarky retorts through her head, but her heart wasn't in it.

"Two more over here," Nigel shouted. The Doctor ran over to where Nigel and Lynn had found the other bodies. Alex stayed with the first. There were things you were supposed to do for dead people. Close their eyes. She wasn't sure this one had ever had eyes. Cover them up. Pray for them, she supposed. In her own faith, praying wasn't much different from listening, so she settled for keeping silence for whatever soul such a person might have had.

Lynn came back to collect her. "We should all stay together," she said. Alex followed without enthusiasm, still dragging herself along the wall. Lynn looked down at Alex's feet, frowning. "Why aren't you wearing shoes?"

Alex didn't feel like answering. She adjusted her stride so they were walking a bit farther apart.

Lynn moved back closer. "Don't wander away from the group."

"Don't tell me what to do," she snapped back. "You're not my mother."

"Young lady, I don't know what is going on between you and your guardian, but this is not the time to throw a tantrum." She had that tone of voice adults use when they're trying to yell and whisper at the same time.

She was right, of course, but Alex wasn't ready to concede the point just yet. She really wanted to kick something. Too bad about the shoes. Gross miscalculation, there, expecting him to notice, or care, that she'd never put her shoes back on. She slowed to match pace with the woman. "Sorry. I'm just being stupid," she said, without much conviction.

They rounded a corner. Here, there were lights recessed into tunnel walls, casting a dim light on the four of them. They walked into the lit tunnel a few paces, then another sound, a soft snick, interrupted their footsteps. They all stood, stock still. "Sh--sh--sh," the Doctor warned, holding up a hand for emphasis.

"Stop there!" The voice spoke a version of English composed entirely of bubbles, or so it sounded. Alex froze. Two alien creatures like the dead one she had just seen were blocking the corridor, with unfamiliar objects in their hands that Alex would just bet weren't sonic screwdrivers.

"Guns, really?" The Doctor complained, holding his hands palms outward, but low, near his waist. Nigel and Lynn copied him. Alex raised her hands over her head and tried to look nonthreatening. The Doctor continued his reassuring patter. "I'm the Doctor, and this is Nigel, Lynn, and Alex. We're here to help."

"Monsters!" one of them bubbled, its gun shaking in its hand. The Doctor slowly, carefully shifted position to transpose himself between the terrified octopus person and Alex. "They're the ones who've been killing the harvesters!"

Alex held still and tried to make herself seem smaller. Their eyes were as big as her hands, and sat very low on their wrinkled, purplish heads. She wasn't quite sure where they kept their mouths, but they seemed to speak from a sort of fleshy spout on the side of their necks.

"We'll come with you quietly," the Doctor said, "We're here to help, after all." He was all charm and reassurance, and the shaky one did respond to that a bit, lowering the gun.

"We have no reason to believe you," bubbled the other. It turned to the four of them. "We'll hold them in the records room until Maran gets back." It gestured with his weapon. They followed. Alex tried to look meek and nonthreatening while she sorted through hypotheses in her head as to why these creatures spoke English. The one who appeared to be in charge pulled a device out of its belt and held it to its speaking spout, its siphon, perhaps? "Garrimon here. We've found something down in the wash tunnels you need to see." Pause. "Defies description." Pause. "Just meet us by the records room. Look, very busy, out."

"We should put them in the lockup," The nervous one said.

"What, with the chewers?"

"Serves them right for getting intoxicated during work hours." The nervous one kept fiddling with its weapon.

Garrimon poked it with an upper tentacle, about where its shoulders ought to have been. "Serves them right, what? Getting their brains eaten by alien monsters?"

"I don't eat brains," the Doctor volunteered, helpfully.

"I don't eat meat. Or brains either, I mean." Alex said.

The Doctor looked over at her in surprise. "Don't you really?"

Alex pulled a face. "No." She wondered if he had a problem with that.

"We don't eat brains either." Nigel supplied, gesturing to Lynn.

"So you say," said Garrimon. "Follow us." The two moved sideways down the tunnel, each one keeping one of its great, swiveling eyes trained on them. The lithe slither of their steps was surprisingly quick and graceful. She supposed that was because they weren't actors in rubber suits. The Doctor walked after them, chatting, followed by everyone else.

Alex contrived to walk next to him for just a moment. "Isn't it kind of weird that they speak English?" she said.

"The Tardis is translating for you. Them too," he gestured in the direction of Lynn and Nigel. "Hey, have you noticed they don't use gender pronouns? I wonder if they're hermaphrodites. Not that you should ask, it's probably rude."

Two more octopus people, these dressed in paler jumpers with more elaborate stitching, met them at the junction with a narrower tunnel. They took one look at the Doctor and his company and leapt back, one of them reaching for a weapon. Alex stepped backward to lean against the damp stone wall. Seven people, including the Doctor at his shiniest and four other jarringly weird aliens, pressed in on her. She was sure they were all saying something important, but the words were jumbling together. She started to slide backwards down the tunnel, trying to get a few more feet of distance between herself and the knot of people.

"Stop!" bubbled an octopus. It shoved its way toward her. She backed away.

"I'll follow you, just give me a little space, OK?" she said.

It looked at her critically with one of its great eyes. She stared at the floor. The octopus twisted the space around it differently than humans or Time Lords did. She needed something else to think about..."George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe," she started to recite, glad for once that she'd been required to commit the Presidents to memory.

The octopus stepped back. Alex breathed out her relief. "Thanks," she told it.

"You're a little creature. Are you a child?"

"Yes." She tried to look small and harmless. Cute was probably a stretch. She probably looked as grotesque to them as they did to her.

"I frighten you."

Alex nodded. When she looked up, the others had all moved on ahead. "Follow me. I will not use my weapon. I have my own little one."

She was a little annoyed at being talked down to, but that seemed like a small complaint, under the circumstances. They trailed along behind. "Bren," the octopus said.

"What?"

"That's my little one. Bren. Likes to build things, and take them apart. None of my equipment is safe." It slithered along next to Alex, all slick and glistening with huge, pupilless eyes and suckered tentacles that divided into three fingerlike projections at the tips. "It liked to run with a pack of squirts about the tunnels all day, getting into trouble, but since the attacks, we've had to keep all the children home."

The thing sure liked to chatter, didn't it? Alex nodded politely, then realized nodding might not be polite, nor smiling, so she just said, "Bet he's bored."

"Complains about it all the time. Hey, how about I just take you back to my place? They're certainly not going to want to question you, not a child, and Bren could use the company."

Seriously? "No, I think I should stay with my own species for now. Maybe later."

"Suit yourself. You want to spend the afternoon in lockup with a bunch of chewers, you can I suppose." Ahead of them, the Doctor, Nigel, and Lynn were being prodded through a door. "They probably wouldn't let me take you anyway."

No, probably not, Alex thought, wondering exactly how this person had managed to rise to a position of responsibility. They reached the doorway. The lockup was a cramped room, with four cells, two against each wall. "Maybe I will just go with you," she said.

"So, are your murder victims actually missing their brains?" the Doctor was asking. "I'm telling you, I've seen these sorts of things before," she could hear the Doctor's voice wheedling from inside the lockup. He got brighter when he was trying to get his way. She wondered if he was influencing them on purpose, and if so, whether that was especially ethical. "Just let me have a look around and maybe we can solve this before anyone else gets killed!" he finished, urgency sharpening his voice.

A new voice bubbled in defeat. "Fine. But you'll have an escort. And the rest of you will have to stay in lockup where I can keep an eye on you. Emel! Emel, bring the small one in here."

"I'm going to take it back to my rooms. It's only a child."

"Don't be an idiot, Emel."

Alex skipped forward before she could be pushed. Nigel and Lynn were already inside one of the clear walled cells, sitting awkwardly in bowl shaped chairs. "In here with them," the new octopus person said, not unkindly, moving back to let her pass.

She stepped into the cell and perched on the edge of an elongated bowl covered with what looked a little like foam rubber, slick surfaced, but cracked in places. In another cell, the only other prisoner lay curled in a similar bowl, asleep or unconscious. Alex lay back on the cool surface and covered her face with her hands. She counted Nigel and Lynn, their octopus guard, the other sleeping octopus, and somebody, felt like octopus, in a room that shared a wall with their cell. Five shouldn't be too bad. She imagined the shield into place again. It kept disappearing every time she got distracted. Setting it back up all the time was getting tedious. She hoped that someday she wouldn't have to worry about it, that it would be as natural as remembering how to walk.

"You all right?" It was Nigel.

Alex sat up. "I'm OK." Lynn was facing the other way, digging around in her bag. Alex was more and more impressed all the time with the quality of security in this establishment. They hadn't even confiscated her giant backpack? "I'm sorry, Dr. Marven. I mean about before. I'm kind of an idiot."

Nigel pressed on. "It's Nigel. You still all in a twist about earlier?"

She hunched her shoulders, defensive. "Guess so."

"What's going on between you and the Doctor?"

Alex picked idly at the cracks in the bowl bed. "Nothing."

"I'm not buying it," Nigel said.

She tore out a tiny chunk of foam rubber, rolled it between her hands. "This time last week I had a week to live. I mean live as a person. I had a long career as a vegetable ahead of me. Then he walks in like some knight in shiny armor...no, like Gabriel the Archangel, and my mom practically shoves me out the door with him." She threw the tiny ball on the floor. "I don't know what I'm supposed to do."

Lynn looked up from inventorying her possessions. "Couple of years ago, when there was all that trouble at Canary Wharf, that big industrial accident, I was stuck in an elevator for six hours. There was this guy. He was an ordinary guy, bald on top. Knew most of Monty Python by heart. We thought, well, for a while it seemed likely we were going to die, and when that happens, you want to talk. At least, we did. About our families, our regrets, things we wouldn't have said to anyone if it weren't the end of the world. And then we were rescued, and I thought I'd never see him again. The next day I started my new job. He was my boss."

"What did you do?" Nigel asked.

"We couldn't even look at each other. I eventually had to transfer to another department. With you, as it happened," she told Nigel. Lynn turned back to Alex. "I take it the two of you are stuck with each other."

"If I ever want to figure this thing out." Alex tapped her temple. She flung herself backward, a bit theatrically. "My life is ridiculous."

Nigel started humming tunelessly for a moment. "We're being imprisoned by sapient octopodes in an underground facility that has something to do with agriculture. In the Carboniferous. Ridiculous doesn't begin to describe the situation." He paused, humming again. "You know, I think we may have drifted offshore in the Tardis. Which would make us under the sea." He bobbed his head to imaginary music and smirked. "I'd like to be," he sang, in a slightly strangled voice, "under the sea, in an octopus's garden, in the shade..." Alex and Lynn stifled giggles. "Well, it is quite a coincidence, isn't it?"

Lynn groaned.

An octopus wearing a yellow jumper burst into the lockup. "Emel has just been to its rooms. Bren is missing. We think it may have gone exploring."

"Are any of the other children missing?" Their guard leapt up, grabbed its weapon, and headed for the door.

"We're calling all of the other parents to be sure. You're not just going to leave them, are you?" Yellow jumper asked, indicating the prisoners with one upper tentacle.

"Has the one called the Doctor been behaving itself?"

"It's completely taken over the investigation, deputized a couple of assistants from the staff, and Ocean, that creature never stops talking. But it hasn't strangled anybody yet."

"Right. Then we'll just leave this lot here unless it asks for them. Assign Emel to watch them, that will keep it from running off on its own to look for its child." Their only guard closed the door behind it, and the three of them were alone in lockup. Not counting the comatose drunk...er, chewer.

Nigel watched them go. "Gabriel the Archangel, really? I always thought of him more as Gandalf."


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Notes: Final installment

Additonal warnings: gratuitous sapient invertebrates, gratuitous water, two deaths of nonhominids, a little more preteen angst.

Thanks to Spring at Teaspoon for excellent beta reading assistance.

* * *

Quagmire, Part 3

Emel's arrival was not forthcoming. After a couple of minutes, Nigel stood up and unceremoniously opened the door. "The Doctor fixed the lock before he left. Shall we go make ourselves useful, Lynn?"

Lynn stood to follow him. Alex hopped off the bed to join them, but Lynn shook her head. "You stay here where it's safe."

Alex sat back down. "I don't think here's any safer."

"For you it is. Stay here. We're just going to check things out, then we'll be right back." The two of them left.

Alex flopped back on the bowl bed, alone now except for the sleeping chewer (drunk?) and the creature in the next room, who for all practical purposes didn't count. She felt...old. Like she weighed a thousand pounds. Sometimes she felt like she wasn't herself anymore. The old Alex, the one who was up at dawn to climb the tallest tree in the park, the one who could read for hours without getting tired, the one who would talk to anyone, about anything, for as long as they would listen...she was dead. She didn't much care for the timid, brittle new Alex. She counted lights. One, two (asleep), three. A few more indistinct smudges in the distance. There was another octopus in the next room was in the next room, but it was wrong. Knotted. Enraged. She sat up. The other one, the reddish one, was throwing panic-sparks. Her own heart raced in involuntary empathy. The door to her cell was still ajar. She slid off the bowl bed, then out the door, glad that her bare feet made no sound on the concrete floor. She tiptoed into the hallway and froze.

One of the octopus people was on top of the other. They were struggling, but the victim was rapidly losing the ability to move as the other landed blows on it with some metal tool that she couldn't immediately identify. She was too small to help. There was nothing she could do...except maybe distract it. She pressed both hands to her ears, took a giant breath, and screamed. And again.

It paused in its bludgeoning of the other octopus person to turn one giant eye on her. Time to run.

She could hear it behind her, gaining, then there was a series of pops loud enough to hurt her ears, followed by a heavy, wet thump. There was a sudden, painful pop behind her eyes, like a flashbulb going off. She turned around, stared at the body on the floor for two or three stunned breaths, and kept running until she had to stop, which wasn't far. She ducked around a corner and crouched there, breathing hard, darkness swimming in front of her eyes.

"Child?"

She looked up. It was certainly somebody. No idea who. Couldn't tell them apart, not if she tried. She figured the differences between humans and sapient octopodes was sufficient to excuse her from any accusations of racism...speciesism? She hazarded a guess. "Emel?"

"Can you walk?" It had gotten shorter, the lower tentacles curled round themselves in a wide spiral. Sitting.

"Did you find Bren?" she asked, pulling herself to her feet.

"Everyone is looking for Bren and the other two children. Your Doctor has found an infection in the chewing fungus. It takes the mind. We have not yet found all those known to chew to excess." Its eyes swiveled to check up and down the hallway. "It's not safe here."

"Did the one who was shot survive?" She thought she knew the answer.

"No."

"What about the victim? He was alive when I left him. Is he going to be all right?"

"No. I'm sorry, child."

Her eyes prickled. She wiped the tears with her sleeve and sniffled. She felt Emel moving in to hold her, like a mother...like a parent. It was hard not to think of Emel as female. She jerked away. "Don't touch me!" she warned.

Emel moved back. "You are a funny looking little thing. I must seem disgusting to your eyes." But her feelings were hurt, she could hear it in her voice, feel it a little bit. The more time she spent around these octopus people, the more she picked up of their emotions.

"It's not that. You look like you're supposed to look. I just can't touch people."

"Ever?"

"Pretty much."

"You poor child." Alex stifled an eye roll, though she had to admit she'd been having her own pity party not ten minutes before. "Do you have a contagious disease?"

"No. I'm not sure what I have would translate into your language." She didn't want to take the chance that it would. Witch burning couldn't be an exclusively human phenomenon. Besides, it was embarrassing. "Can I help you find Bren?"

"I'm not supposed to be looking for Bren."

"I know. Where haven't you tried yet?" She followed Emel down the deserted hallway and through a door into a much less well maintained tunnel. Luminescent mold gleamed on the walls in the dim light.

"I think they're following the investigative team." Emel flicked on a flashlight that was so dim Alex wondered why it bothered. "This way." It led the way down twisting tunnels, stopping at sounds that apparently were unusual, while ignoring others Alex thought were much more suspicious. Emel lived here, so it probably knew what these tunnels were supposed to sound like. Alex could barely see.

Somebody else was bending space behind them. "Emel, something's following us," she said.

"I don't hear anything." Emel said, though it quickened its pace.

"Maybe I hear better than you," she suggested. "They can't be far. Four meters, tops."

Emel pressed itself into one of the round hatchways that lined the walls. There wasn't enough room for Alex to squeeze in, not with her generous personal space requirements. Emel's tentacles twitched. One wrapped around a handle sticking out of the hatch. "They? Could it be Bren and his friends?"

The two octopodes, sensed more than seen, burned with hunger and rage. "I hope not," Alex said.

The two infected octopodes sped up, their liquid movements making soft swooshing sounds against the floor. Emel wrenched down on the handle she was holding. The hatch opened a crack. Warm, green smelling wind blew over the two of them. Emel rolled her body out of the hatchway and into the hall. "Jump, now," it said.

Alex jumped into blackness, holding her breath on a hunch. After a long moment of falling, she splashed into deep, still water. There was a circle of light above her. Emel's body blocked the light for a moment. It dangled, working the hatch closed, then followed Alex into the water.

It swam over next to where Alex waited, treading water. "Now, we'll dive down and take the flooded tunnels to the central garden."

Alex ducked down underwater to flip her hair out of her eyes, then wiped the brackish liquid off her lips with the back of her hand. "I can't do that. I need to breathe."

"The water doesn't smell very nice, but it's adequately oxygenated," Emel protested.

"I only breathe air."

"Oh." A brief, uncomfortable silence followed. "You have any more physiological quirks you'd like to share before I accidentally kill you?"

"Only that...can you see down here?"

"There's not much light, but yes."

"I can't."

"Right, I'll keep that in mind, then." Emel swam in a large circle around what Alex assumed was the perimeter of the pond.

"Are you looking for an above-water way out?" she asked.

"I thought you couldn't see anything."

"I can see you. You're alive."

"What does that have to do with whether you can see me? Well, I suppose if I don't find a way out for us, you'll have all the time you need to explain. Aha!" There was the sound of another hatch opening. "This one's only half full of water. You'll still have to swim, but you'll be able to breathe."

Alex swam toward Emel, then felt along the wall until she found the round opening, just above the water line. "I can do it myself," she said, waving off assistance to haul herself over the lip of the hatch and into the cross tunnel. Emel swarmed up after her, more graceful in water than on land. The skintight jumpsuits made sense now as attire. Their clothing had to be practical for both water and land. The water was up to her chest. She swam forward, still blind, kicking off from the floor every few strokes.

They took several turns into side tunnels, enough that Alex became thoroughly turned around, when she had to call Emel to a halt again. "More people," she said. "Three. Other side of this hatch."

"Now I know I don't hear anything."

"They're being quiet. I'm pretty sure they're scared." Pretty sure was an understatement. Her own heart was racing in sympathetic response.

Emel swam past her. "Back up to that last hatch." Alex felt her way backward. "If anything happens to me, you go through and close the hatch behind you."

Emel opened the hatch. Piercing whistles filled the air. Alex covered her ears. The shrieks died down after a couple of moments. "Bren, Dloon, Amer! What are you doing down here?" She proceeded to chastise the three children, all the while wrapping them up in her tentacles and squeezing each in turn. Alex was worried for a moment that they would all get knotted together, but they managed to organize themselves. "You might never have been found. I would have swum right past you!" she said.

"What's that thing behind you?" shrieked one of the children, with renewed panic.

"Hi," Alex said. "I'm a friendly monster."

"She helped me find you, loves." It ushered the other children into a line along one wall. "All right then, what happened?" it prompted. They all spoke at once, predictably. Emel stopped them. "Just Amer, it's the oldest."

"We heard there were aliens, so we went to see if we could find them. Then Dom Galn started chasing us, and we thought it was mad because we were supposed to be in our rooms, so we ran. And then this alien monster attacked Dom Galn with a flashlight,"

"It was blue," another child interjected.

"It was not, it was brownish, like that one," Amer corrected, pointing at Alex.

"The flashlight was blue, Amer. So we ran down to the flooded tunnels and then we got lost." The littler octopus person twisted its tentacles together anxiously.

Emel stroked each one in turn, getting their attention. "All right, now we are all going to calm down and get back home. Some of our own people have gotten very sick and are hurting people."

"Killing people, you mean," interrupted one.

"Yes, Bren, killing people. We think we know what's wrong, now, so it's going to be fine, but for right now, we all need to stick together and no wandering off." Three heads wobbled in a gesture Alex assumed meant agreement. "That means you too, little alien."

"I'm not going anywhere without you. I can't see down here."

"Bren, Droon, Amer, Al...I'm sorry dear, I can't pronounce your name, all together now, and quiet, just in case." They lined up, Alex taking the rear, and sloshed their way down the tunnel until it began sloping upward and growing more shallow. There was a mechanical thunk, followed by a rushing sound in the distance. Emer paused.

"Collection sump, everyone hang on and be ready to switch to gill breathing." The other children wrapped tentacles around handholds spaced along the walls.

Alex grabbed a handhold with both hands. "I don't have gills," she reminded Emel, bleakly.

"Those little handling tentacles of yours won't hold up to the current either. Come here. Quickly."

"I told you, I can't." The rushing was getting louder, closer.

"If you don't come here, right now, you'll be bashed unconscious against the walls when the backwash fills this tunnel, and then you'll drown. What could be worse than that?"

Alex waded toward Emel, desperately imagining her shield as a thick, muffling blanket, wrapping it around herself, layer upon layer. It was a little easier to tell what she was doing, with four other minds to test it against...she could feel the shield holding them out. For a moment, the water drew away, swirling around her ankles. Emel snatched her up with two thick tentacles, folding her in tight against her rubbery jumpsuit. Alex cowered inside her own head, battered by rushing water and disorganized fragments of color, pattern, and sound. This was when she usually broke, the foreign patterns rolling over her, blotting her out, leaving her unable to move, or think, or exist. "George Washington," she squeaked. Water filled her mouth and nose, choking off her voice. She thought the rest of them, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, air, air, she thought, the shield eroding as hypoxia started to overwhelm her. She was dragged forward, then, suddenly, released.

She lay on the floor, coughing up brackish water. She felt like she lay there a long time. Her lungs burned. Finally, she sat up, feeling simultaneously sick and strangely elated. "I did it!" she tried to shout, but her voice wasn't working yet, and the attempt sent her into another coughing fit. Emel stood nearby, its body language managing to look worried despite its dissimilar anatomy. Alex waved her arms in a helpless gesture she hoped looked apologetic. A few more breaths, and she found her voice. "I'm OK," she said, more quietly, trying to spare her abraded throat. "Are you all right?"

Emel shifted its stance slightly. "Fine," she said, wryly. "Why shouldn't I be?"

"You didn't get dizzy or anything?"

"Should I have? You're a funny little fish aren't you?" She paused, taking another look at her. "You are a fish! Modified almost beyond recognition, but a fish!"

Alex sat up. "I'm not a fish. Are you an octopus?"

"Well, no, but...same evolutionary branch. You had distant ancestors who were fish, am I right?"

Now that she thought about it..."Actually, yes."

Emel looked up and down the hallway again. "Can you walk yet?"

"Yeah." She got up to wade alongside the octopodes, using the wall to help her balance, stopping to cough every few steps.

Emel found a room with only one door and herded them all inside to await an escort home. It pulled out its phone equivalent. "This is Emel. I have Bren, Amer, Droon and the little alien with me. There are at least two infected up in tunnel 24." There was a pause while she was questioned.

"The squirts are fine. The alien child is an obligate air breather, came close to drowning in backwash. It's conscious and breathing." There was another pause.

"Yes, yes, it's fine. We're all fine. Tunnel 9, near the second outflow port. I think we're in Drinn's office."

She cut the connection. "We're going to wait here," she told the assembled children.

It was a very short wait. Footsteps pounded down the hallway outside, at a run. Must be the Doctor. Did he run everywhere? The door opened on the Doctor, looking all worried again, and an octopus person she didn't recognize. "Right, then, problem solved, back to the Tardis."

He knelt down in front of her and waved his blue flashlight thing over her. "You, my dear, are hypoxic. Have to get you back to the Tardis, get the residual salt water out of your lungs."

"Emel held me down so I wouldn't get washed away," she said.

"Thank you, Emel," the Doctor said to it. He moved to pick Alex up. Emel curled a tentacle around his arm to stop him.

"It's all right, Emel, the Doctor's different." She got to her feet. "I can walk," she protested to the Doctor.

"But you shouldn't." He scooped her up easily.

Alex tried again. "Emel held me down for ten whole seconds."

"Did she? It's good that you're not heavy." He kept walking. Nigel and Lynn caught up with them.

"Emel held me down for ten whole seconds and I recited the Presidents of the United States and... I'm. Just. Fine." Then she had a coughing fit hard enough to almost make her black out.

"Except for the drowning."

"Whatever," she snipped. She thought he might be teasing her. He couldn't possibly be as dense as he pretended to be.

The four of them rounded the corner to where the Tardis sat on its ledge. The Doctor set Alex down on the control room floor and took them all on a short hop back to the surface. She was almost too exhausted to say goodbye to Nigel and Lynn, and blacked out while they were rummaging around for the winch.

When she woke, she was lying in the infirmary, swaddled in blankets, and her chest didn't hurt anymore. The Doctor was perched on a chair near her bed, reading an e-book. He set it down by her bed. "You did well today," he said. "I heard about you trying to save that clerk."

"I didn't save him, though." In all the confusion and the running and the nearly drowning, she'd almost forgotten.

"You don't win every time. Trying counts for something. And you found someone trustworthy and intelligent to help you. Don't knock that. It's an important skill, I ought to know. Oh, and reciting, to augment your shield, that really was clever. Where did you get the idea?"

"A Wrinkle in Time. Kids' book." She paused. "Can I ask a stupid question?"

"No such thing."

"How come when somebody touches me I get so swallowed up in them I can't even think, but they don't even notice?"

He thought for a moment. "See, not a stupid question at all. A complicated question, though. First off, you're not shifting into their frame of reference, so all either of you perceive is untranslated static, maybe a bit of emotion. You get hit with a lot more static than they do."

That was clear as mud. "But they have to notice something, don't they?"

"People see what they expect to see. Like the Tardis. I can park it anywhere and most people don't even see it. Some of that's the perception filter, but even perception filters work on the natural tendency people have to ignore what doesn't seem important at the time."

He left the e-book reader next to her bed. "You can sleep or read, but don't go running around. I'll be up in the control room if you need me." And just like that, he was gone. 1. Chapter 12. Chapter 23. Chapter 3


End file.
